Baseball Baby Quilts {Applique Bonanza}

Since last I posted about the progress on my baseball baby quilts, I made some creative decisions about what to do for the applique section of the quilts. It also helps that I now know the names!

My final decision was to add just the name to each quilt. With the names being longer, I decided to simplify the applique section. I created my own alphabet templates for this project simply by making a font extremely large in Word (one page per letter!). The tracing was done with the help of the afternoon sun in my bathroom window and I did all of the ironing and trimming while my husband and I listened to Christmas music in the evening last week.

Since the quilt itself has black in the prints, I decided to do the letters in black solid. (I had plenty of navy in my stash but no black so I got a little delayed with that!)

For each quilt, I laid out the letters and approximated the middle of each name; I started adding letters from the middle out (definitely testing my spelling skills) until each letter was added. I probably could have made the letters slightly smaller -- I sort of underestimated how wide these would be!

Then came the machine applique of each letter. This font was a good choice because the letters are simple lines and curves and the corners are nice and sharp!

I used black thread and did a simple small zig-zag stitch around the letters. In a world with unlimited time and thread, I might have outlined one with red and one with blue satin stitching but I really want to get these to the recipients before Christmas. It's rather hard to pick out the stitching with black thread on black fabric, but trust me -- it's there!

Now to decide on backing and start quilting. I plan to use the same backing for both and also plan to use the same quilting motif for both (currently my plan is a meander with stars). One will have a blue binding and one will have a yellow binding. Keeping many of the design elements simple makes it much easier to accomplish two quilts in the time of one -- literally!

Don't forget to enter to win a set of 2.5" Island Batik strips in this post!

Baseball Baby Quilts {Tops for Twins}

After what was a momentary lull, I am back to having three baby quilts on my to-do list. The first two are the twin baseball-themed quilts using these fabrics:

I decided to use our new Boot Scootin' Baby pattern for these quilts. This is my first time using this pattern.

I also decided that I didn't need to be fancy with these quilts -- the two tops will be exactly the same.

The number one complaint (if you can even call it a complaint) that we seemed to get about the Ready, Set, Soar pattern is that it doesn't use 2.5" strips. Boot Scootin' Baby does use 2.5" strips so it does have that perk.

I did a lot of chain piecing over the weekend! I was about halfway done with the strip piecing when I snapped this picture.

A reminder -- when you're sewing strip sets, remember to sew with the same fabrics on top or bottom to reduce stretch and wonk! I always sewed with either the yellow or blue print on top and the white or red print on the bottom. My strip set ended up very straight and my selvages lined up well too!

I have both of the strip bases done but I only had time to slice and insert the applique background for one of the two quilts. The quilt is a little long because I used a full width of fabric for my strips instead of trimmed down strips. I'll trim the bottom before I do the quilting so that both quilts are the exact same size.

Now I have to decide what I'll use for the applique section. Part of me wants to move forward and simply add the applique sections and get these finished, but there's also part of me that wants to wait and add the names of the boys once they are born. But that delays quilting, binding, and mailing so I'm going back and forth on what to do.

Happy Monday! Sharing at Linky Tuesday!